Daredevil: Reconciliation
by sonicteej
Summary: Daredevil Season 3 Spoilers. Less than two months have passed since Matt Murdock overcame his crisis of faith and helped put Wilson Fisk behind bars once again. Our hero can't seem to avoid trouble however, as some unfinished business comes back to haunt him and threaten Hell's Kitchen. One of his problems is none other than Benjamin Poindexter.
1. The Road to Damascus

_As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?"_

 _"Who are you, Lord?" Saul asked._

 _"I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting," he replied. "Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do."_

 _The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not see anyone. Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing. So they led him by the hand into Damascus. For three days he was blind, and did not eat or drink anything._

Acts 9, Verses 3-9

 **January 25th, 2018**

 **Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul the Apostle**

 **4:01 PM**

Kenji Oyama did not like to spend money. Fūjin Clinic, his baby, was the top of the line as far as clandestine medical operations in Manhattan go, but that reputation certainly wasn't due to its looks. Many of the lights gloomily dangling from moldy ceiling tiles were in their flickering death throes or had gone out completely, the floor hadn't been washed since the building's long gone history as a legitimate establishment, and there was no heating.

As he sat shivering against the cold metal of his bare hospital bed, ex-FBI agent and convicted spree killer Benjamin Poindexter took little comfort in knowing that literally every expense had been spared for him. There was an armed guard at the door, but Oyama's boss had provided the protection free of charge.

Dex wasn't being held against his will at Fūjin Clinic, but the people that had given him the chance to seek treatment here had quickly identified him as extremely mentally unstable. Dex figured that the guard was more of a display of power than a symptom of a legitimate fear that he would snap, however. With just the scalpel left at his bedside he would be able to overpower the guard, and with the surgeries Oyama had performed..

A voice echoed into Dex's room from down the hall and, not unlike a speeding motorcycle passing you on the interstate, rose in volume until it was roaring just outside the door.

"Here's the man of the hour! How've you been, Ben? I see you're still enjoying the room I rented for you. What'd they give ya for dinner last night, the steak or the lobster? Or did they even make ya choose?" The visitor jested at a mile a minute, strutting across the dirty tiles in a pristine black suit. He looked as if he had stepped right out of a men's fashion magazine, with golden-blond hair and a perfect, tanned white complexion.

"Rice." Dex responded bluntly.

"What's been the matter with you, Ben? A couple of months ago you were shooting the shit with me for hours! I thought we really got along, don't tell me that was just your mouth pickin' up for the slack in your legs." The man smiled, his white teeth seeming to almost shine like a fragment of heaven that had fallen into the shithole that was Fūjin Clinic. Dex remained silent for a moment, but opened his mouth before the visitor could find an excuse to beat him to it.

"If my body can do the talking now," he started, glaring at his visitor, "I would prefer to let it."

"Mister Quartermain, how are you?" Another man asked as he entered the room. Like the visitor he wore a suit and was well-groomed, but outwardly the similarities stopped there. This man was not particularly charming, and spoke slowly and deliberately to make sure the Americans could process his thick Japanese accent.

"Well I'm still breathing, so it can't be that bad." Quartermain joked, and the Japanese man responded with an awkward sort of canned laughter that he took in stride. "Really though, I think we're on the verge of something revolutionary with Ben here. It's a shame he seems to have lost his passion about it though. Are you sure about these conditions? I know he's a tough son of a bitch, and I saw worse conditions at Ranger school, but are you sure he isn't sick?"

"If the serum works, he cannot get sick. Mister Oyama tells me you have a gift for our subject, perhaps that will raise his spirits?"

"See Asano, you don't have any time for bullshit, I appreciate that." Quartermain remarked. "I see why we had to drop the bomb on you guys, you're a bunch of ruthless motherfuckers. Hopefully when Manhattan II is complete, civilians will never get wrapped up in this stuff again."

"You and the subject. Follow me." Asano said, turning on his heel and walking out of the room without delay. Quartermain looked to Dex with a nonplussed, perhaps sympathetic glance that gave way to a stupid smile.

"You're gonna love this." He said, and followed Mr. Asano into the dingy hallway. Dex fell in line behind them, careful not to let his bare feet slip on the grimy floors. He wore nothing but a thin hospital gown.

Asano briskly led the two into a part of Fūjin Clinic that Dex had never seen before. It was a small auditorium, but almost all of the seats had been removed. Oyama stood on the little stage, examining the contents of an unmarked luggage chest.

Dex followed Asano and Quartermain up to the chest. Inside was a suit of body armor, not unlike the Daredevil suit he had worn (and been paralyzed in) a little under two months prior. This suit was all black though. Its eyes weren't covered and, most peculiarly, it carried the logo of his old rec-league baseball team on the forehead. Two concentric white circles.

"A bullseye." Quartermain pointed at the symbol as Dex held the helmet in front of himself. "We figured it was fitting, because how great of a shot you are. You could also think of it as a sort of challenge to your opponents, though this helmet might actually protect you from a headshot. Would depend on the caliber. Not like you'd let that happen anyways, isn't that right Ben?"

"How long until I start?"

"We can't say yet, but the enhancement is far from complete. It would be best not to get your hopes up." Oyama stated, looking to Quartermain as he spoke. The helmet Dex held started to shake as his hands became unsteady.

"Don't worry Ben, we'll get you on the field soon enough. Just be patient and your purpose can be realized." Quartermain assured him, speaking gently all of a sudden. He set a hand on Dex's shoulder, and Dex's eyes snapped to meet Quartermain's like a frightened animal.

"My purpose is to be out there, putting people down." He hissed. Quartermain frowned.

"We are done here. Return to your room." Asano stared Dex down until the 'subject' relented, tossing the helmet back into the chest and hopping down from the stage without a word.


	2. Status Quo

**January 26th, 2018**

 **7:48 AM**

Matt Murdock opened the door to his law office, Nelson, Murdock & Page. He had arrived to work on time for the 55th consecutive time that day (save for a couple days off for Christmas). That hadn't happened since.. Well since he had first put on the black suit. It was also one of the first times his knuckles had healed since then, not to mention his laundry list of other injuries.

There was no Daredevil suit in the trunk at home today, but Matthew Murdock was still Daredevil. Before he opened the door he knew that Foggy hadn't beaten him to work for once today, and that his best friend wasn't close behind either. Karen had put on some coffee several minutes earlier but now was on the other side of the office, typing away on her laptop instead of the decrepit desktop computer that she hadn't turned on in a week.

"Any idea where Foggy is?" Matt asked, folding up his cane and setting it on a table before leaning against the doorway of Karen's office. It had taken him some re-training, but finally he wasn't pretending to feel his way around when he was alone with Karen. There were no secrets anymore.

"Hopefully not picking up breakfast. Our clients have got that covered already." Karen smiled. Matt chuckled, well familiar with the menagerie of scents that came off their clientele's preferred method of payment- food. In this situation Matt would usually commit his hands to clutching his white cane, but in front of Karen he just sort of clasped them nervously together, massaging one of his palms with the thumb of his other hand. They were calloused but healing.

"Just like the good old days I guess." Matt said, and then started unwrapping a homemade pie to prepare a slice for himself. Karen got up and sidled toward him.

"What flavor is that?" She asked. Matt stopped for a moment with a smile, taking in the pastry's smell more carefully. Under the crust, that was.. Peach- not his favorite. He looked to Karen so she could see his face and called the flavor. Then he cut into the pie, releasing a wave of peach aroma powerful enough for Karen to take in with ease.

"I can cut you a piece." Matt offered, and Karen obliged. They stood together in silence then, eating pie for breakfast like a couple of adults living their best lives.

"Y'know I grew up working at a diner and.. Kevin and I used to try and get away with making pie for ourselves for breakfast. My dad would never let it happen but one time my mom sent him away on an errand and the rest of us all had pie together." Karen reminisced.

Matt could tell when the memory hit her- her heart rate had spiked after she took a bite. But as she told Matt her story she became relaxed. Despite his senses, however, Matt wasn't sure he could identify the warm feeling that flooded him as he observed Karen speak to him. Karen had trusted Daredevil with her life before, but somehow this was something more. She was talking to Matt Murdock, and she trusted him completely.

"My dad would get ice cream for dinner sometimes. He would say something like, 'you're in luck Matty, your old man's made dinner tonight', and he'd help me put together an ice cream sundae."

"Did you have sundaes on Sunday?" Karen smirked.

"Oh yeah." Matt said, and they laughed quietly together. "It was always on Sunday."

"I'm hoo-oome!" cried Foggy Nelson as he entered the practice as his usual, non-subtle self. He took the coffee off and poured some for himself as his partners sauntered in with their confectionaries.

"Anyways," Foggy continued, "I got stopped by a police officer on the way here."

"What'd you do this time?" Matt asked, his face wrinkling with worry as if he were really concerned his friend had a run in with the law. How ironic that would be. Foggy treated him to perhaps the most sarcastic laugh he had ever heard.

"Believe it or not, after 3 years of working with Matt Murdock and Karen Page, I am still not a wanted criminal." Foggy stated. Matt smiled and Karen rolled her eyes. "Nah, he wanted to tell me about someone they've got at the precinct. They picked him up last night fleeing a shootout."

"Why's he want us involved?" Karen asked.

"The guy says Wilson Fisk was the one who wanted him dead. He was sure of it. The officer, rightfully so, suspected we'd want in on anything to do with Fisk."

"Did you get a name?"

"Yeah, Melvin Potter." Foggy offered. Matt sighed heavily. "Why doesn't it surprise me that you know him?"

"Melvin created the Daredevil suit." Matt explained. "The fake one too. He was being coerced into working for Fisk and he's.. Not the fastest guy around. He would think anyone trying to get to him was Fisk. Still, I owe him a favor."

"Great, then let's go talk to him!" Foggy declared.

 **8:09 AM**

"Hello Mr. Potter, I am Matthew Murdock and these are my partners Karen Page and Foggy Nelson. Foggy and I are defense attorneys, and we're here to represent you." Matt said politely, closing the police department door behind him to protect his attorney-client privilege. Foggy offered his hand to Melvin and the bald man shook it vigorously. He looked confused and scared- not uncommon for the folks Matt and Foggy typically represented but this guy was absolutely dumbfounded and mortified.

"I would say it's nice to meet you, but given the circumstances I'm sure you would've rather not needed a lawyer in the first place." Foggy joked as the three partners took their seats across from Melvin.

"I don't know what you're on about Mr. Foggy, I sure am glad to see you! Everybody else.. Everybody else is pretty mad at me."

"I know this is a scary time for you Melvin, but you can trust us. If you'd like us to help you through this just say so and we won't let anybody else know what you say to us here." Foggy explained. He had taken on a softer tone after taking a moment to gauge the situation.

"Okay." was all Melvin had to say.

"Can you tell us what happened this morning?"

"They went after me and they hurt Betsy, and the police saved me but they locked me up, and they wouldn't let me see Betsy." Melvin went through his explanation quickly, barely getting it out before breaking into tears.

"Do you have any idea who attacked you?" Karen asked.

"Fisk...It's Mr. Fisk." Melvin sobbed. "He said he would hurt Betsy, and Daredevil said he wouldn't let that happen, but then they did hurt her, I think they killed her… Daredevil lied to me!"

Foggy's face wilted into the all-too-common "come on Matt" expression. Matt's perception of the emotion coming off his best friend was a lot less straightforward but he had sensed it often enough to know at this point.

"I'm sorry, Melvin. He tried the best he could." Matt said. It wasn't really true though, was it? Melvin Potter had been just a stepping stone on Daredevil's one-track path to killing the Kingpin.

Melvin's eyes grew wide, and angry. Matt knew the tailor idolized gladiators- he had posters of them in his old workshop- but in the moment he felt like a toreador and this client was one very angry bull.

"How do you know?" Melvin spat. He grabbed Matt's tie and slammed the lawyer's face into the table, leaning in to hiss into his ear. "How do you know!?"

"Melvin." Karen said gently. Foggy looked nervous, deliberating whether his literal superhero of a friend needed help getting this madman off of him. Karen just brushed some hair out of her face, called Melvin's name and met his angry eyes with unflinching intensity.

"Matthew is Daredevil." she said, "and he messed up. But he's trying to make things right and he needs your help again to do that."

Melvin released his vicegrip on Murdock's tie and settled down. Matt sat back up, looking embarrassed. He looked particularly ridiculous as one of his circular glass lenses had popped out in the brief altercation.

"The police are charging you with escaping from prison," Karen continued. "Can you tell us about what happened there?"

"Yeah well Chris, there was this nice man named Chris who was the bus driver, and he said we were going on a field trip."

Foggy set his chin in his hands at this point, and his elbows on his knees as if this unbelievable counseling session was winding him up like some kind of stress-powered jack-in-the-box dying to spring out. Except instead startling laughter it would probably just be tears.

"I thought it was weird cause they weren't very nice, not nice enough to do a field trip, and it was already dark out." Melvin continued. "And it turns out it wasn't a field trip. They pulled into a building and tied us up and shot at us."

"Oh god, I'm sorry you had to experience that." Karen said. She spoke for all of them, especially Matt.

"What happened next?" Foggy followed up.

"I broke the chair I was in and then I ran away.. I didn't know what to do, so I went to Betsy's house. We got in the car together and the bad guys followed us, and they had guns and they shot at us. Betsy was distracted so she hit something, and then the police showed up."

"Is there anything else you can tell us that might help us find the bad guys?" Matt asked. Melvin responded with a dejected "no", which was obviously genuine.

"Thank you for your cooperation, Melvin." Matt smiled as best as he could manage. "You'll be safe here in the police department. In the meantime my partners and I will put together a case and get you the justice you deserve."

"You've made a lot of promises." Melvin muttered. "I hope you keep one for once."

 **8:35 AM**

"What the hell, Karen?"

"Really?"

"That's sensitive information! You can't just go around telling people!"

"He's bound by law to keep it a secret. And do you really think that guy would snitch on you anyways? Not to mention you owe him, and we weren't going to get _shit_ out of him otherwise."

"It's still not your call, you can't tell anyone."

"Your call was to lie about it to me for two years and nearly tear us apart, so maybe it should be my call."

"Karen.." Matt threw his arms up slightly in a defeated gesture. The blind lawyer had a great amount of success in the courtroom but definitely had a losing ratio against Karen Page.

She put her arms underneath his, wrapping him in a quick hug. As she pulled away she held something up in her hand- a circular, rose-tinted lens that was still missing from his glasses.

"You need to trust me, okay?" Karen insisted. Matt didn't respond but held still as she popped the lens back into its frame.

"If the lovebirds are done with their conversation, there's something I'd like to add." Foggy said as he stepped into the moment. He had somehow legitimately surprised Matt- how long ago had he stepped out of the police building?

"I managed to get some more info about Potter's situation from the cops. Apparently two other inmates from Ryker's Island were found dead in an abandoned building this morning. Tammy Hatwell and Felix Manning."

"Oh shit. He's getting revenge." Karen whispered. Matt shook his head.

"That's impossible. They put Wilson Fisk in the Raft after what he did. He doesn't even get a right to counsel anymore, there's no way he's pulling strings from in there." Matt insisted.

"Well buddy," Foggy sighed. "We better make sure there's no way. Come on, we've got a case to make."


	3. The Meanest Motherfucker in the Valley

**Chapter 3: The Meanest Motherfucker in the Valley**

Dex hadn't been to church in a long time, but he was familiar with the hyperbolic lectures, the vindictive priests foretelling an eternity of suffering in a lake of fire to strike fear into the hearts of sinners.

It wouldn't be foolish of him, then, to think that he may have finally been condemned to the ultimate punishment. His ACU boots tread over the oil, shrapnel and blood that had been blasted into the sandy dirt as he rushed into position. The heat of a raging oil fire was unreal, on another level entirely than what you might experience under a bright sun, and Dex kneeled right next to it as he propped his rifle up on the side of an overturned Humvee. The smell of burning hair and flesh filled his nose and as his squad-mates went to work pulling bodies out of the wreckage Dex settled down with his gun and adjusted the scope.

This could very well be hell, Dex thought, but that would be okay- the Devil is the one that should be afraid of him. He peered out across the desolate field, where the desert met the floodplains outside of Al-Najaf. The fire of the burning Humvee only carried with it so much light, and after that it was nothing but darkness for miles.

Except, in the distance, a hint of movement. It was almost imperceptible, a shadow against a shadow, but Dex could see it. He squeezed the trigger once, twice, three times. With every pull his body was rocked by the recoil of a blast of deadly force, and with every pull a human life was extinguished.

Usually he smiled. There was something he found enjoyable about picking off the Iraqi insurgents from half a mile away. Usually their blood splattered onto whatever sandstone wall they were trying to use for cover, usually it would throw their fellow insurgents into a hilarious panic, usually Dex's squadmates would congratulate his kill over the radio- usually he couldn't hear their screams.

This time he could, and they were loud. They carried on, a drawn out yelling and wailing that seemed to get closer, to get louder. Steadily the torment gained intensity, taking over Dex's head like a migraine until he seemed certain his skull would burst.

 **January 27th, 2018**

 **2:25 AM**

Dex's eyes shot open. In an instant he was not in Iraq anymore but back in New York, in Fūjin Clinic. He breathed in slowly and looked over at the doorway. The screams in his dream had actually been coming from a number of individuals being wheeled past his room. It was hard to get a read on what was going on from his position but there was a lot of blood.

Asano quickly walked by and was stopped just outside of view of the doorway by an Asian woman Dex hadn't seen at the clinic before. Her black hair was pinned up into a bun and she had pale skin. Dex could tell she was definitely Japanese, if only because of the breakneck speed at which she went at it with Asano in their native language.

She was clearly very, very upset, but it wasn't long before Asano had enough of it and walked away. The woman continued to scream at him, but evidently the boss refused to continue the conversation. After a moment of defeated deliberation she started to turn around and happened to lock eyes with Dex. She stared him down for a good few seconds and left with a bit of a smile.

 **11:01 PM**

Besides a fresh coat of blood on the floor from the clinic's recent influx of patients, the day had come and gone like normal for Dex. Exercise, physical therapy, and a whole lot of sitting around watching bugs crawl on the ceiling.

There was a point to it, of course. Dex's spine had been completely surgically reconstructed out of metal and artificial tissue, and the effects of the drugs he was taking had to be carefully monitored as they were extremely dangerous. Still, it had been a couple of months now and he was getting impatient.

A visitor arrived at the door without a sound- the woman who had been arguing with Asano earlier.

The armed guard, startled by the woman's sudden appearance, tried to rebuke her in Japanese. She smiled, setting down the trunk she had brought with her, and put an arm on the man's shoulder.

In one swift motion she unsheathed a combat knife and deposited it in the guard's throat. She threw him onto the floor where he passed out from shock and would soon bleed to death.

Dex grabbed the only thing available to him, a drinking glass left at his bedside, and hurled it at her. He aimed for her left temple, hoping for a killing blow. Dex of course had quite the arm so at this range there would be only a split second before impact.

It was just enough time, though, for the woman to catch the projectile in front of her face with her left hand. She dropped it onto the grimy floor where it shattered into several pieces and kicked up some flecks of blood.

"I'm not going to hurt you." she said, switching to an impeccable American accent. Still, there was this harsh coldness to the woman's voice that persisted across languages.

"Who are you?" He asked.

"My name is Maki Matsumoto." She said, creating bloody footprints as she paced right up to Dex with confidence. "I am the last master assassin of The Hand."

"Okay sounds spooky, what do you want with me?"

"We're running into stiff opposition on the streets. There are a lot of gangs trying to keep us from regaining what we've lost, and the NYPD is onto us more than ever."

"You've got the wrong guy. I'm not interested in shooting up some cops for you."

"You might want to reconsider. My boss, Mr. Asano, just started working with Fisk."

"No way." Dex growled. His fists clenched, his breath got heavy and he glared at Maki. "There's no way I'm having anything to do with that bastard ever again."

Maki walked back over to the trunk and popped it open. Dex recognized it as the gift Clay Quartermain brought for him earlier and, sure enough, Maki procured a bullseye-marked helmet from the case and tossed it his way.

"Help me take this place over," Maki proposed, "and you can work for whoever you want."

Dex took a long look at the helmet, at the symbol it carried. If Fisk was worming his way into New York's criminal underworld again, what would happen if Dex _didn't_ take this opportunity? Would he be forced back under the Kingpin's thumb?

He put the helmet on slowly. He had seldom worn a helmet during his time as a sniper, he always found they were very uncomfortable. The Bullseye helmet, though, was more than comfortable. It felt natural.

"Well, Maki," he said, "A lovely night for murder, isn't it?"

 **January 28th, 2018**

 **2:00 AM**

Dex reloaded his pistol. He had fired 14 rounds and killed 22 people. Not all with bullets, of course. Asano's henchmen really stood no chance, so about halfway through the firefight Dex started coming up with some less conventional methods of murder.

Speaking of less conventional, Dex watched Maki wipe Dr. Oyama's blood off the _sword_ she had used during the fight. Her white ninja-yoroi was now stained with ribbons of blood from the men she hacked apart.

"I was wondering if you would live up to the stories." Maki mused. "I can't say I'm disappointed. Where did you learn to throw like that?"

"None of your business." Dex looked away, habitually fiddling with the slide on his gun. He liked to see the bullet in the chamber.

"Definitely not your first time killing either, though I knew that much already. I'm willing to bet you're like me, and that your first was a looong time ago."

"Look, ninja lady, I'm not your friend. We both had the same person we wanted to kill and that's it. Where is he, by the way?"

"Asano? He left before we got started. Nobody sticks around this place longer than they have to."

"Any idea where he went?"

"I wouldn't really worry about him. His crime outfit has always been shaky. People have called it Itai no te, the Hand of the Corpse, because it was stitched together from the dead remains of the Hand." As she spoke, Maki started to casually mutilate the face of a dead security guard with the tip of her blade. Dex's lip curled, but he didn't look away. "After the deaths of Nobu and Murakami, I was next in line to be daimyo. Asano is nothing more than a pathetic business mogul that snatched my inheritance from me. I suspect now that I have made my intentions known, his underlings will rally to me instead."

Dex holstered his pistol and delved back into the dirty bowels of Fūjin Clinic, leaving Maki to deface corpses on her own. He went back to the room they had kept him in and picked up the trunk that had held his Bullseye suit.

He lingered in that room for a while, ten minutes at least, silently reflecting on the last couple of months. He thought about the promises Clay Quatermain had made him, and about the unlicensed doctors and assistants that had tended to him. The conditions were abysmal, sure, but they did seem to care for him on some level. He and the assassin woman had just unceremoniously killed them all.

All that murder had given Dex an agency over himself that he had been yearning for. Even in the Daredevil suit he was never truly been free to be himself. In this suit, though, his next choice was undeniably his to make.

Dex walked around in the aftermath and gathered the weapons of the deceased in his trunk, pondering the next move of Bullseye.


	4. One-Two Punch

**Chapter 4: One-Two Punch**

 **January 29th, 2018**

 **10:56 AM**

The jury filed into their seats beside the courtroom floor. They comprised of fairly randomly selected individuals from all walks of life, though more often than not they were mildly confused adults happy to be spending a weekday morning displaced from their took off coats and hats and talked about how they should have worn less today. The temperature had actually broken 40 degrees on an otherwise dreary Monday morning, and it was the first day in weeks that it hadn't snowed. The banks of blackened snow built up on the roadside still wouldn't melt down until sometime in March, they speculated.

Matt looked to Foggy, who sat beside him. This wasn't the first trial they had done since they got back together, but Matt still couldn't help but think about how glad he was to be working with his best friend again. Foggy was neither excited nor bored, instead demonstrating a professional sort of complacency when it came to waiting.

Nobody in the room seemed to be feeling particularly strongly about the imminent trial, actually, besides their defendant. Melvin Potter's heart was racing, though Matt was sure that Melvin wore his nervousness so obviously on his face and in his body language that even a not-blind man could see it.

"Relax, Melvin. Everything's going to be okay." Matt turned in his chair to give Melvin an encouraging smile. Melvin didn't respond but seemed to take the reassurance to heart. Matt could tell the simple comment had calmed him down significantly.

Opposing them today was Gary Feinstein from the District Attorney's Office. Nelson, Murdock & Page had a complicated relationship with New York City's prosecution. On one hand, they were both legitimately interested in securing justice and had worked together to imprison Wilson Fisk- twice. On the other hand they represented opposing sides in the courtroom. Foggy had once considered Feinstein a friend, but as Nelson had prevented more and more of his accused from ending up behind bars they had grown further apart.

Once everyone had settled down, the judge loudly cleared his throat into the microphone. He spoke more casually than one not experienced with court trials might expect, but this was of course a more casual case. It didn't call for the pomp and circumstance of say, The People v. Frank Castle.

"Good morning everybody. Let me just tell you about what we'll be doing today. We'll start with the opening statements of the attorneys. First the State will have an opportunity to make an opening statement, and then the defense will have an opportunity to make an opening statement. After the opening statements we will break for lunch, and then we will return for the presentation of the evidence."

"Now, the opening statement is not evidence," the judge continued, "it is just an introduction to the attorney's case, a prelude if you will to what they believe the evidence will show. Okay, at this time we're ready for opening statements."

 **January 29th, 2018**

 **11:01 AM**

Karen rang the doorbell of a white-brick apartment on 52nd Street. It was a product of the upscale housing put up by the Kingpin and his initial criminal cabal after the Battle of New York, after the Hulk flattened whatever was there before, and it must cost a small fortune to live in.

A few minutes passed. People usually came to the door at least to tell Karen to go away, it was why she opted to come in person instead of call. There was something about phone calls and emails that people just found easy to ignore. Much harder to ghost somebody that was standing right in front of you.

"What?" A white woman in her forties answered the door with deliberately obvious annoyance. She was still in a nightgown, her hair was undone, and from her red and irritated face Karen could tell she had been crying.

"Hi, I'm Karen Page. I was hoping to speak with William Riggle."

"Bill? I kicked the old bastard out."

"What?..I don't understand." It was a common phrase for Karen, despite how bright she was. The kinds of things she looked into tend not to make sense at first. That, and it got people to divulge information more often than asking directly did.

"Check his social media account. He's been cheating on me with some bitch from work, Christine Joyce. Helped make a bunch of kiddy porn too, with underage prisoners."

"Mrs. Riggle, I think your husband is innocent. Of those two things at least. I think someone is running a smear campaign against him." Karen also commonly revealed that she had been playing dumb by suddenly manifesting informed opinions like this. People didn't usually notice.

"Yeah right. I know who you work with, Karen Page. I don't need any lawyers, me and Bill are through." The lady said bitterly before slamming the door in Karen's face.

"Ms. Page." A voice called to Karen from several feet to the right. It was a fairly old man, wearing a gray, sleeveless undershirt and blue jeans. He didn't even have shoes on but instead covered his feet with only a plain pair of white socks. She had assumed they were a homeless person, and technically she was right.

"I'm the person you're looking for." he said. "Would you like to take a walk with me?"

 **January 29th, 2018**

 **11:01 AM**

"Permission to approach the jury, your Honor?" Gary Feinstein asked as he sauntered up to the small podium facing the jurors. He didn't bother to wait for a response because the response was always 'Permission granted'. It was just a formality.

"People of the jury. I don't want to waste your time here today, so let's just get to the facts. What we have here is a simple case of a prison escape gone wrong. Melvin Potter here was two months into a seven year sentence at Ryker's Island when he conspired with a number of individuals to escape lawful custody on the night of January 25th, last Thursday. Three of the individuals were Ryker's Island staff, and two were fellow inmates serving life sentences."

"Unfortunately the story doesn't end there. After a disagreement amongst the conspirators, shooting broke out in an abandoned building on the corner of 20th & 33rd in Queens. In order to escape his fellow conspirators, Melvin Potter coerced officer Betsy Beatty to drive him out of the city. A shootout ensued, in which officer Beatty was shot and killed."

"Under New York Penal Code Act 328 Section 193 Melvin Potter is subject to up to 5 years additional imprisonment for escaping lawful custody. He also coerced a police officer into committing a misdemeanour and violating her duty as a public servant, which constitutes coercion in the first degree. Under Act 135 Section 65, that is a class D felony subject up to 7 years imprisonment. And let's not forget the Pinkerton Liability rule, which states that all parties to an unlawful conspiracy may be found guilty of substantive offenses committed in furtherance of the conspiracy."

"Melvin Potter's involvement in this prison break indirectly resulted in the deaths of three individuals. The _minimum_ sentence for a class A felony such as murder in the first degree is 15 years. For those of you keeping count, that means the minimum sentence for Mr. Potter is 57 years in prison. However allow me to point out that the reason Potter was able to coerce officer Beatty into assisting in his escape in the first place was because of the relationship they had built during Betsy's time as Mr. Potter's parole officer."

"That's right, three years ago Melvin was let out of prison on parole after being arrested for larceny and the destruction of property. Late last year he was imprisoned again for not only violating parole, but for obstructing justice and assaulting several members of law enforcement. Melvin Potter had his second chance- it didn't work. This man is a danger to society, guilty of a laundry list of felonies including three counts of murder in the first degree. People of New York, I'm sure we are all too familiar with criminals such as Mr. Potter running around, thinking they can do whatever they want. It's up to you to prove them wrong. Help put this man away and you'll be doing your part."

Gary dipped his head slightly as some kind of faux bow and returned to his seat. He shot Matt and Foggy a sideways glance before looking back to the papers he had prepared. The prosecutor's heart rate was fine, he wasn't nervous at all, but Matt could tell he wasn't actually all that confident in his case. Yeah, Matt thought, he was right to be doubtful.

"Permission to approach the jury, your Honor?" Matt asked, and permission was granted. He stood up and made his way to the podium. He could've made his way to that podium without his cane even without his enhanced senses at this point really, but he used it anyways. It put people in the mindset of being sympathetic.

"Hello everyone. We are here today to determine whether or not Melvin Potter is guilty of the charges that have been brought against him. The prosecution suggests- no, seems to guarantee that the man sitting here with us today is not capable of functioning in society with the rest of us. They would rather have him locked up somewhere and to throw away the key. I'm here to tell you that not only is that claim untrue, but also that the prosecution is unable to prove _beyond a reasonable doubt_ that Melvin is guilty of the charges they have decided to bring against him."

"Melvin is a good, kind man." Matt insisted. He walked out from behind the podium and approached the jury to speak to them more directly. "When he was arrested six years ago, Melvin was scared. He regretted ever breaking the law. After making it through three years of reform in the New York prison system he made parole on good behavior and worked closely with his parole officer Betsy Beatty to make sure he never slipped into unlawful behavior again. He got a job as a tailor, even volunteered at a local soup kitchen. These are the kinds of things the prosecution won't tell you. They would rather you not think of Melvin as a person."

"They also won't tell you that the obstruction of justice Melvin was arrested for last year was helping Daredevil resist arrest from FBI SWAT teams. Shortly afterwards, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI New York Crime Division Tammy Hattley was proven to be working for Wilson Fisk. I don't think there's any need to tell you what he's guilty of." Matt smiled and paused, and got a small chuckle out of the jury. Telling a joke at the expense of the Kingpin felt really, really satisfying. Maybe even more than punching him in the face over and over again.

..Nah, probably not.

"I should mention that after receiving her life sentence, Tammy Hattley cooperated with police and helped convict Wilson Fisk. The prosecution has also neglected to share that Tammy was one of the Ryker's Island prisoners killed in that abandoned building."

"Melvin isn't guilty of breaking out of prison, nor was he complicit in any of the crimes committed by the Ryker's Island staff. He himself was escorted out of the prison against his will as part of an assassination attempt carried out on behalf of Wilson Fisk. We know his guys, Fisk's dirty lawyers, are capable of it. They got him out of the very same prison and into a penthouse last year. Melvin isn't the one responsible here. He's the victim."

"It's okay if you don't believe me. It's up to the prosecution to do the convincing. If you're buying into their story, consider this: what proof is there that Melvin was a willful party in the conspiracy to break him out of prison? The prosecution admits that the ones responsible for the prison break chased Melvin down with guns and fired on him, declaring that there was a disagreement without providing even a possible reason. There just isn't enough to go on here, and Melvin Potter is innocent until proven beyond a reasonable doubt to be guilty." Matt said with finality. He then turned on his heel and sat back down with Foggy.

"That concludes the opening statements. We will now break for lunch and reconvene in 15 minutes." The judge announced, and those gathered slowly started to get up and leave the courtroom. Only 12 minutes had passed since the start of the opening statements, but the jury only had 15 minutes to get their free lunch so you can bet they were getting up for it no matter what.

"I thought we agreed not to mention Daredevil." Foggy muttered.

"Ah, it doesn't matter. We've got this case in the bag." Matt shrugged.

"You're not wrong. It was still a bad call, bringing him up. Not everybody in New York thinks fondly of the Devil of Hell's Kitchen."

 **January 29th, 2018**

 **11:03 AM**

Riggle led Karen across 11th Avenue, to a park that was nearby. To the residents of Hell's Kitchen, Clinton was a green oasis in a desert of concrete. On winter days it blended in with everything else though, blanketed in white. Branches heavy with snow cast a chilly shadow over Riggle and Karen as they walked.

"You know there was a push to rename this park after the Avengers, after the incident. People tried to make it happen for years, until that Sokovia thing happened. Just like that the conversation stopped. Crazy how somebody can go from a hero to a villain overnight." Riggle observed quietly. Had Karen met Riggle just a few days earlier, his transformation would have been shocking. One day he was the indignant warden of a massive prison complex, the next he was getting philosophical, shivering in an undershirt talking to whoever would listen.

"You didn't do those things, did you?" Karen asked. "The cheating, and the pornography."

"No, I did have an affair. The porn thing is completely fake. They were both set up though. Wilson Fisk set it up so he had leverage over me."

"He set up your affair?"

"I suppose that one's still my fault in the end. But yeah, he paid Christine to seduce me. His lawyers told me as much."

"How is Fisk still in contact with his lawyers- I thought he lost the right to counsel."

"I know you know how blackmail goes Ms. Page. I'm not the one who gets to ask the questions. They just told me what to do and I did it."

"Well obviously it didn't work out. Someone pulled the trigger on Fisk's leverage over you, why?"

"They wanted a few people dead," Riggle explained, "One of them got away, is in the hands of your two very bothersome lawyer friends, and they want me to pay the price."

They came to a stop at a picnic table. One of the branches above the table had snapped, spilling down snow that had started to melt on the somewhat unseasonably warm day. The rest of the table was dry though, and Riggle took a seat. He reached into the right pocket of his jeans and, with a slow, shaking hand, pulled out a handgun.

"Are you going to shoot me?" Karen asked. She reached into her purse.

"No, Karen. I'm going to shoot myself."

"Wait, wait, hold on. They can't substantiate pornography that never existed. You won't go to jail, Bill, my lawyer friends will make sure of that. They can work for free, even."

"I don't care about prison. There's no due process for what Fisk did to me. My wife and my job are all that I had, and it doesn't matter what you or Nelson or Murdock says. I'm not getting them back." Riggle said, choking up. Karen wanted to grab that gun out of his hands, but somehow she couldn't move. The fear got to her and it was as if she was paralyzed. So she stood there and watched, and Riggle brought the gun to his head and pulled the trigger.

 **January 29th, 2018**

 **11:29 AM**

"The prosecution would like to call Melvin Potter to the stand." Gary announced as the court resumed session and the witness testimony began. Melvin stood up, clearly very confused.

"Objection, your Honor!" Foggy shouted, raising his hand. "The prosecution cannot force the defendant to testify. Melvin Potter, as per the Fifth Amendment, has the right to remain silent."

"The decision remains up to the defendant." The judge remarked. He seemed kind of testy about this turn of events.

"Do not go up there." Matt practically hissed at Melvin, losing his cool for just a moment before recomposing himself. "Foggy and I have got this, so you can just stay in your seat."

"I have something I wanna say though." Melvin denied his lawyers' advice with a puzzled expression and walked up to the stand.

"Do you solemnly swear that you will tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?"

"Uhh.. Yeah."

"You may give your testimony."

"Well, I started working with Mr. Fisk a while ago. He said he would hurt Betsy if I didn't do what he asked. So I made him suits. Combat gear type stuff, that could take a blade or a stray bullet. And then I met Daredevil, and he said I didn't have to work for Fisk anymore cause he would protect Betsy from him. And that didn't really work out and I'm really upset about that but I think he's trying his best to make up for it, so you guys should really listen to him when he says I didn't mean for any of that bad stuff to happen. It's all true, and this guy is making stuff up." Melvin said, gesturing to Gary.

"What do you mean, we should listen to Daredevil? Could you please elaborate on that?" Gary asked. Matt and Foggy visibly recoiled.

"Oh uh, I think maybe I shouldn't have said that." Melvin shrunk, like he was trying to hide behind the witness stand. Maybe he was shielding himself from the anger radiating off Matt Murdock.

"Are you suggesting your attorney, Mr. Murdock, is the masked vigilante known as Daredevil?"

"Objection, your Honor. The prosecution is trying to determine my client's testimony with leading questions." Matt said. The room was building up with an intense, intangible pressure. Heart rates climbed and the air itself seemed to get thicker, and hotter.

"Overruled."

"I… I'd like to sit down now." Melvin whimpered, and he was allowed to return to his seat next to a pair of absolutely fuming lawyers.

"Welp. Matthew Murdock is Daredevil, everyone!" Gary Feinstein said with a laugh. "I rest my case."


	5. Identity Crisis

**Chapter 5: Identity Crisis**

 **February 3rd, 2018**

 **9:25 PM**

There is something uncomfortably empowering about being inside of somebody else's space. Your space is the only place you're allowed to be you- to truly be yourself, the version of yourself untampered by inhibition. It's like a physical manifestation of your mind, and so when Karen was trespassing she felt as if she was breaking into not only property but instead into a person's true self. For example, Frank Castle might have appeared to be a gun-toting maniac, but his untouched suburban home had been a microcosm of a simple family life.

Christine Joyce's Ninth Avenue apartment was a window into an entirely different type of individual, but likewise it was a manifestation of the true version of Christine. It was public knowledge that Christine was a 22-year-old accountant at a generic Manhattan business firm, that she had allegedly been manipulated into having an affair with a certain warden of Ryker's Island that had since taken his own life, and that she was taking a break from social media and not willing to give any statements. All that could be found on her Twitter page. But Karen needed more, so here she was.

The first room was a wide rectangle, with a living room on the left and a small dining room and kitchen on the right. The dining room was nothing more than a round wooden table and two chairs, and Karen could tell Christine never ate there because there were still groceries stacked on top of a pile of old mail and magazines on the table. Most of the groceries were non-perishables in cardboard boxes, stuff like pasta, rice a roni and cereal. The garbage can was full of frozen meal boxes and a plastic bag of washed-out diet soda cans hung next to the sink.

A mostly empty bowl of oatmeal, an apple core and a remote control sat on a coffee table in front of the sofa. Besides a TV standing on an otherwise bare entertainment center the living room was home to little else. There were still Christmas lights hanging on the ceiling though, as well as a large poster of Alison Blaire, a singer from the 80's, pinned to the wall next to the TV.

Karen walked down the hallway. On the right side were doors to the bathroom and a maintenance closet. On the left was Christine's room.

There was a shaggy, sort of peach-colored carpet underfoot here, littered with laundry. Most of the clothes were skirts and button-up dress shirts, but there were t-shirts, jeans and a hoodie in the mix. Karen picked up the hoodie. It was a navy color, with "STUYVESANT HIGH SCHOOL" printed across the front in white letters. She dropped the hoodie and sat at Christine's computer, waggling the mouse to wake it back up.

The computer lit up to display its lock screen- a rather flattering image of Tony Stark in a suit. Karen snorted at the idea of someone being attracted to the weapons manufacturer. She wasn't amused for long though, because of course there was an empty text box that needed a password.

She looked around on the desk, sifting through papers and knocking over soda cans. There was a paperback personal horoscope book and, in a signed copy of 'A Cheap Trick and a Cheesy One-Liner', a yellow post-it note. Karen hoped Christine remembered her place in the book (It was the chapter about Tony's first advances into Intelligent Virtual Assistants) because she pulled the note out and read it- a single line of script in black pen reading '10880'.

Sure enough that was the password. Karen successfully logged in and was greeted by a window with a few tabs. Netflix, YouTube and, most importantly, Christine's email account were still open from the last time she was using the computer. Karen scrolled through the inbox and found a statement from five days ago. It was a report of a payment of $3,000 from 'Ernest McJavit'.

Karen wrote down the name and email attached to the payment and, fearing that she had spent too long trespassing already, returned everything pretty much to the way it was and left. She scurried out of the apartment building, trying not to be suspicious but also hoping not to be recognized. Given everything that had happened in the past few years, Karen Page was a well known name in Hell's Kitchen. The knowledge of her likeness was catching up, and Karen was finding it harder to go unnoticed.

Part of Karen wished that she could put on a mask. It would certainly help while breaking the law. Unfortunately she had none of the athletics or acrobatics that had helped Daredevil escape from police during his many forced entries. She did find herself becoming more and more like Daredevil, though. They were both heroes in their own right, proponents of the law who knew that sometimes you have to break it. While she had been furious when she found out Matt was the man in the mask, she was sad to see Matt drift away from the persona in recent months. She believed in heroes, though at the same time it was nice to see Matt retire from the danger. He had been living healthier in the last few months than she had ever seen him before.

The elephant on that train of thought being that retiring Daredevil hadn't actually protected Matt. Karen had recklessly given Matt's secret identity to a client, who in turn had suggested it in the middle of a public testimony. Melvin's slip-up effectively amounted to hearsay so no legal action had been taken, but once the idea was put out there it wasn't hard for everyone to connect the dots. It caused such a ruckus among the jury that Melvin's trial had been indefinitely suspended, and newspapers, including the New York Bulletin, had been plastered with headlines like 'DAREDEVIL'S IDENTITY REVEALED?' ever since. Ellison had reached out to Karen for help writing a piece but she declined. She wondered if that connection had been permanently severed now. Probably.

The day's light rain had turned to snow after the sunset, and Karen stood by herself on the cold night pondering Daredevil and herself to the hum of a street lamp. She wondered if she could put some white roses in her window again- would Frank Castle show up? Frank wasn't like Matt, there was nothing in the world that could make him give up being the Punisher. What had that conviction cost him, though?

 **February 3rd, 2018**

 **9:47 PM**

Saturday nights at Josie's were usually wild, but tonight was something else. "Let 'Em Talk" by Kesha was blaring out of Josie's old radio, getting nearly drowned out by cheering and hooting and hollering as tonight's resident celebrity Matt Murdock sunk another eight ball, heralding another victory.

"Alright Rob, pay up." Matt rubbed his fingers together, barely able to talk past his laughter. The bald-headed patron slapped a five dollar bill into Matt's hand.

"Hey Foggy, how much is this?" Matt lifted the bill to verify its value with his friend sitting at the bar. Foggy didn't say anything, or even break out of his dejected slouch. He just lifted a hand with all five fingers outstretched.

"See, there's no way he's blind!" Rob Donohue pointed at the exchange with a big smile, hitting the rest of the crowd with his elbow to try and rile them up.

"I swear, I'm clinically blind!" Matt said, laughing as if he were being sarcastic. The entire group of drunk pool players erupted into laughter.

"Your buddy's the Devil of Hell's Kitchen, y'know that?" one of the patrons called over to Foggy, rowdily wrapping his arm around Matt.

"Come on, I'm _not_ Daredevil!" Matt smiled through a drawn-out cry, like a kid laughing along while he was getting teased.

Foggy didn't react. He just watched his friend get drunk, completely hammered, and show off his super senses in their favorite bar like a party trick.

"So uh, has he always been able to do that?" Josie asked sort of indifferently. Foggy shrugged. Not that he didn't know the answer, he just didn't want to talk about it. He was finally roused from his slump when his phone started vibrating with a call from his fiancee. He got up and stepped outside to take the call.

"Hey honey, what's up?"

"Foggy.. How are you doing?"

"Kind of shitty, to be honest. My best friend just got his secret identity doxxed and is currently getting drunk off his ass instead of talking to me about it."

"I still can't believe how crazy that whole situation is. Maybe he just needs to drink through the initial shock of it getting out."

"Yeah, maybe. Did you want to talk about something, Marci?"

"Oh, yeah. Some more bad news, in case we didn't have enough to be stressed out about."

"Oh boy!" Foggy cheered, swinging his arm in an aggressively sarcastic surge of joy. He was alone on that street corner of course, emoting to himself as he was prone to do.

"I've got a notice of hearing here, apparently I'm being charged with malpractice during the Kline case."

"What?"

"I don't know, Foggy. The trial's scheduled for three weeks from now, that's all I know."

"Shit… Okay well. I would come home to look into it with you right now, but considering how much Matt has been drinking I think he's fixing to crash hard later tonight and I want to stick around to pick him up."

"Aw, he's lucky to have you. I know he's Daredevil, but Matt would be hopeless without you. Anyways I'm going to go ahead and go to bed in that case. See you tomorrow, Foggy-Bear." Marci said lovingly. Foggy could hear the smile in the voice as she said that, how she was legitimately excited to see him tomorrow. He was lucky to have her, really. She had taken the Daredevil news surprisingly well.

"See you tomorrow, baby." Foggy said. He hung up and looked back at Josie's. He wanted to go home, to be a pleasant surprise to Marci, but his best friend needed him.

From the other direction, footsteps. Approaching him out of nowhere in the middle of the night was his other partner Karen Page.

"How's he doing?" she asked.

"I'm great, thanks for asking." Karen rolled her eyes. "Matt not so much. I'm planning on sticking around to make sure he doesn't pass out and choke to death on his own puke."

"Gross." Karen said with a bit of a smile. "You can go home if you want. I'll take care of Matt."

"It's kind of a lot to handle in there. Matt is showing off his superpowers." Foggy crossed his arms to the tune of a roaring cheer escaping the walls of the bar.

"Oh god. Shouldn't he be trying to, y'know, not incriminate himself like that?" Karen asked.

"Well, the "Matt Murdock is Daredevil" case is a big mess nobody at the DA's office wants to touch with a ten foot pole. And there's nothing illegal about a blind man being good at pool."

"Huh." was all Karen could manage to say about that. "Well, I have plenty of experience dealing with drunk men. I'll be fine, you can go home."

"Thanks buddy, you're a lifesaver." Foggy relented and, like a tag-team, they high fived and went separate ways.

 **February 3rd, 2018**

 **11:17 PM**

"Come on man, I'm obviously over 21."

"I don't know. You look like your mother dressed you." The bouncer's lip curled as he looked Dex up and down. The 34-year-old was dressed in a dress shirt tucked into a pair of black slacks that were a little too short for him. They were the best fitting attire he could find in Fūjin Clinic that wasn't stained with blood or bitten up by moths- or incredibly conspicuous combat armor, for that matter.

"I'm behind on my laundry." Dex said with a smirk. The bouncer padded Dex down and, after he didn't find anything, accepted the charge of entry in cash and let him in through the metal double doors.

The Blood Rose Nightclub was on the west side of Hell's Kitchen, not far from the docks and out of the range of the gentrification that had been creeping outwards from Midtown. It was a more humble affair than what the rest of the city had to offer, the kind that kept the lights low so you couldn't tell how dirty it was.

Dex paced into the crowd, scanning the area as best he could in the midst of the haphazard club lighting. He noted that the doors used a typical crash bar type design, that there was another pair of doors in the back of the building that acted as a fire escape and a single door that led to a staircase to the roof, that there were two unarmed security guards on duty, that-

"Hey! Looking for someone?" Dex was snapped out of his tactical surveillance by the shout of a large man wearing a denim jacket with rolled-up sleeves and brown pants and a pair of half-rimmed glasses. He extended a hairy arm outwards for a handshake.

"No, uh.." Dex shook the man's hand firmly. "Just looking around. It's my first time here." He released, and the man shook his hand out with a wince.

"Welcome to this corner of Hell's Kitchen. Hope you stay a while." The man smiled broadly through his monster of a beard. "I'm Tim, by the way. Don't suppose I could get your name?"

"Lester." Dex nodded without skipping a beat. He had that part down at least.

"Nice to meet you Lester. Want to sit down with me? I'll buy you a drink."

"Yeah, if you're paying." Dex went along with a smile. They sat down at a couple of old-school bar stools, the backless kind that used to be covered in cheap red leather but all of that leather had flaked off years ago. Tim ordered a couple of drinks.

"You new to the area, then? Or just never tried this place out?"

"..I grew up in the Bronx." Dex said. That's where his orphanage was, though he didn't plan to get that specific. "Then I had a place in Soho, near Greenwich Village. Just recently moved out."

"But stayed in the city. You find a better place?" Tim asked.

"Eh, more like life just happened. Can't stay here, y'know." Dex said. Tim laughed, a lot more heartily than a comment like that really deserved. Dex's drink arrived, and he took a sip. "I'd say I'm in a better place now though. I dunno, maybe. I've still got stuff from that part of my life to take care of."

"If you ask me, I'd say you just gotta move on from that shit. Forgive and forget, my dude. And-" Tim lifted his glass, "what better way to forget?"

"Cheers to that." Dex smiled, and the two of them clinked their glasses together.


	6. Homily

**Chapter 6: Homily**

 **February 4th, 2018**

 **8:41 AM**

Matt's face hit the floor. That was the first thing he remembered that Sunday morning, his face colliding with the concrete floor of his bedroom. Someone picked him up and sat him down on his bed. He clutched to his bedsheets for dear life as the whole world seemed to spin- he felt sure the building was collapsing and he was about to go careening, head over heels, back onto the floor.

He didn't fall though. He remained perfectly still as the world seemed to surge around him. His perception in general was a blur. Matt heard his heartbeat, the blood it pumped as it made its way through his veins, food travelling through his digestive tract. Everything on the inside was uncomfortably loud, and everything on the outside was nondescript.

That same someone brushed some hair out of his face and pinched his cheek. Through the sensory soup he picked up on familiar sensations. The shape of this person as sound bounced around them, their smell, their heartbeat..

"Karen?"

"Yeah Matt?" She asked. He smiled.

"What time is it?" Matt asked as he laid down. He had a talking alarm clock, but it would be a bit of a hassle to reach in his current condition.

"Twenty-til-nine." Karen said. "I figured I would wake you up, since you said you were going to church at nine with your mom."

"Wake me up, huh. Did we.. spend the night together?"

"Technically. I practically carried you back here last night, and I took care of you after you passed out."

"Thank you, Karen."

"I owe at least that much to you, don't you think?"

"Look, the secret identity thing. It's not your fault, it's mine for making you complicit in the first place." Matt said, talking to the ceiling. His ability to think and speak so fluently in the middle of a super-hangover was impressive. He had been trained to maintain strict control over his mind and body, after all. "Why don't you stay over and we can talk about it?"

"You would ghost your own mom?"

"I'd rather spend the day with you."

"You might want to rethink that, Murdock. You might regret it one day."

"..Yeah, you're probably right." Matt struggled into an upright sitting position. Talking to Karen put him at ease, and his senses were starting to recalibrate themselves.

"I can't stay anyways. I agreed to meet with Mrs. Urich for lunch."

"Oh. How's she doing?"

"She's still fighting. Maybe not for long." Karen frowned. "She's got a, uh, a nephew I think, taking care of her. He doesn't bother talking to her though, so for that all she's got is me."

"That's good. That's good of you to do that, Karen."

There was a long silence then. Karen got up and grabbed her purse. She stopped in the doorway of Matt's bedroom.

"Hey Matt?"

"Yeah?"

"Later today, once we're both free. Let's spend a proper night together."

 **February 4th, 2018**

 **9:10 AM**

Matt quickly walked down the center aisle, genuflected towards the tabernacle, and sat next to his mother in the second pew from the front. Heads turned at his arrival, people who recognized him as Matt Murdock and noticed he wasn't bothering to use his white cane anymore.

Mass had started without him of course, and the assembly was in the middle of the Kyrie Eleison when he arrived. Kyrie Eleison, Christe Eleison, Kyrie Eleison- It was Greek for lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, lord have mercy.

He looked to his mother, and she gave him a curt smile. Sister Maggie had been a nun for over 40 years altogether, so expecting her to speak during mass, even to greet her son, was out of the question. Matt was well aware of that, and so they stood together without a word.

"Almighty and most merciful God, grant that by the indwelling of your Holy Spirit we may be enlightened and strengthened for your service; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen."

"Amen." The assembly responded. Father Jonathan was a new priest, pulled into Hell's Kitchen from a much more hospitable parish in Albany to fill the all-too-soon vacated shoes of Father Lantom. The Church was having a bit of a problem finding priests in the first place, and Matt could tell Jonathan was not overjoyed with the idea of living in the tumultuous neighborhood. Or maybe that was just the nervousness of conducting mass that Matt could sense. He wondered how many services Father Jon had given before.

 **February 4th, 2018**

 **11:31 PM**

Bullseye rounded the corner of the Blood Rose Nightclub in a hurry. He carried the trunk that previously held his suit in his left hand and a pistol in the other. He had thrown away the ill-fitting hand-me-downs from the other night and instead rolled up in full Bullseye attire.

"Woah woah woah!" The bouncer reached out to stop Bullseye but stopped cold in his tracks when there was suddenly a gun pointed at his forehead. He tried to call for help but as soon as he opened his mouth Bullseye pulled the trigger. A bullet went through his eye and out the back of his head, and a sheet of viscera splattered onto the brick wall behind him.

Bullseye carried out his next few actions very quickly and deliberately. He hadn't silenced the gun, and even if he had it would've still been loud enough for the people inside to hear. The police would be getting calls almost immediately so he had to act with haste.

He pulled the door open so hard he wrenched the handle off, and strode inside with confidence. Through the flashing lights he quickly identified the guards and took them out with a kind of surgical precision he found immensely satisfying- there wasn't a direct line of fire to the second guard with all the civilians in the way so Bullseye ricocheted a bullet off the metal frame of a mirror.

One of the clubgoers took his shot at the attacker, grabbing Bullseye's gun out of his hand. Before the hero could even turn the gun around Bullseye hit him with to the floor with the trunk in his left hand, dropped the trunk, grabbed him by the shirt with his right hand and threw him across the room.

Bullseye picked his gun back up and holstered it before jogging back over to the front door. He ripped the crash bars off the doors and wrapped the vertical rod like a knot through the holes where the door handles used to be.

Somebody cut the music and turned all the lights on, presumably to help stop the attacker. There was nobody up to the job though. For the moment, Bullseye had this crowd all to himself.

"Now that I have your attention," he smirked, "let's start things off with a matter of fact." Bullseye kneeled next to the trusty trunk he had brought along and opened it up. The guns he had collected from Asano's henchmen were gone, sold in exchange for the trunk's new contents. A bomb, along with a handheld remote detonator that Bullseye picked up before rising to his feet.

Many of the members of his fear-stricken audience pulled out their phones. Some took pictures or video, most of them made phone calls. Bullseye walked up to one of them, a woman with auburn hair who could hardly speak through her tears. He switched the detonator to his left hand and snatched the phone from her.

"Hello, is this the police?" He asked, looking to the girl with a smile as if it was some kind of great joke. She did not share his sense of humor.

"Who is this?"

"I'm the guy with the _gun_. I've also got, say, 30 people locked in a room with me and a bomb rigged to take us all out. So I think you better listen to what I have to say."

"Alright asshole, what do you want?"

"Not much. All I want is for you to bring me Wilson Fisk so I can shoot him in the head."

 **February 4th, 2018**

 **9:24 AM**

"A reading from the holy Gospel according to Mark." Father Jon announced.

"And according to you, oh lord." The assembly responded. Matt and his mother, and most of the Catholics present, performed the sign of the cross. With one hand, each of them traced the shape of a cross over their forehead, lips and heart. It was a sign that they would take the words to heart, essentially.

"And at once on leaving the synagogue, he went with James and John straight to the house of Simon and Andrew. Now Simon's mother-in-law was in bed and feverish, and at once they told him about her. He went in to her, took her by the hand and helped her up. And the fever left her and she began to serve them. That evening, after sunset, they brought to him all who were sick and those who were possessed by devils."

"The whole town came crowding round the door, and he cured many who were sick with diseases of one kind or another; he also drove out many devils, but he would not allow them to speak, because they knew who he was. In the morning, long before dawn, he got up and left the house and went off to a lonely place and prayed there. Simon and his companions set out in search of him, and when they found him they said, 'Everybody is looking for you.'"

"He answered, 'Let us go elsewhere, to the neighbouring country towns, so that I can proclaim the message there too, because that is why I came.' And he went all through Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and driving out devils... The Gospel of the Lord."

"Praise to you, lord Jesus Christ."

 **February 4th, 2018**

 **11:37 PM**

"Yeah, uh. Let me put you on hold." Officer Samuel Reed said to Bullseye. He lowered the phone into his shoulder to relay the masked man's words to his superiors.

"Wilson Fisk is way out of our jurisdiction. That's a federal prison, I'll have to get Department of Justice on the phone." Captain Strieber called across the flurry of activity that had surged in the 15th Precinct over the past two minutes.

"Even if we could get to him, our perp made it pretty clear he wants to blow the guy's brains out." Lieutenant Mahoney interjected. "We're not allowed to just lead someone to slaughter. Not even that asshole."

"We got pictures coming in from the hostages." One officer said from their computer, pulling up a series of cell-phone pictures of Bullseye. Mahoney rolled his eyes when he saw the stylized body armor. Yet another hyper violent Daredevil knockoff.

"Looks like he's not bluffing about the bomb." Strieber lamented. "Hey, Powell! Put your team together, I need you down there establishing a perimeter ASAP!"

"Hey." Mahoney stepped up to his commanding officer. "Let me take point on this nutjob, alright? I've dealt with a lot of these costume types, I think I know how to take him out without giving him a chance to blow everyone up."

"Alright, you take this one. I'm sending in SWAT to back you up, they'll be taking orders from you."

"Reed, put me on the phone."

 **February 4th, 2018**

 **11:43 PM**

Mahoney stepped into the passenger seat of a squad car, not bothering to put on his seatbelt as they sped off to the crime scene. He had taken a stop at the armory before leaving the precinct, as well as picked up Officer Greenstreet.

"So, guy with the gun, what makes you willing to threaten a bunch of people and yourself for a shot at Wilson Fisk?" Mahoney asked into the phone.

"Just getting revenge." Bullseye explained. He talked calmly, just casually explaining what exactly it was he was doing with his night. "It's the one loose end in my life right now. I can't rest until 'Kingpin' gets a bullet through his fat face. And I gotta be the one who pulls the trigger."

"Do you… often commit homicide to ease your mind?"

"Eh, just when the mood hits."

"I hate to break it to you buddy but the law doesn't really care about your mood."

"Oh I know. But the law hasn't worked for people like me in a long time, has it?"

"What, guys with guns?"

"Those with a warrior's spirit. Those of us that live to fight, for whom killing is a talent and a passion. It used to be, kings would rally people like us to their ranks when they waged war. Now, the great leaders of our times still fight Crusades don't get me wrong, but they're a shadow of what once was."

"In the United States we send young men over to fight, to give them a taste of battle and awaken their warrior's spirit- their will to kill- and then send them back home and force them to repress that part of themselves- their true nature- for the rest of their lives with people that are soft, that don't know shit." Bullseye continued.

"The third world isn't much better. They train their warriors to set up traps, to take lives in hit and runs and suicide bombs. Just to inconvenience the juggernauts until they get sick of it and obliterate them in an aerial bombing. Fighting doesn't really exist in warfare, not anymore."

"But with the rise of enhanced individuals you see something else. True combat, grounded not in impersonal weapons of destruction but the strength of an individual. The Harlem Incident, the Battle of Greenwich, the Clash of Avengers- Hell's Kitchen's own Daredevil's exploits… This is true combat. I say all of that to say, I don't care if I'm breaking the law or putting other people in danger. Once Wilson Fisk is dead by my hand I will accept my fate. I don't fear a warrior's death."

 **February 4th, 2018**

 **9:29 AM**

"Good morning everyone. I'm Father Jonathan, in case you haven't met me yet. I wish we could meet under happier pretenses, Father Lantom was a friend and role model to me. I lament his passing, as all of you do. I don't think he would've wanted us to dwell on his death though. I'm sure he's in heaven wishing we would celebrate his life instead, and what better way to do that than to celebrate Christ?"

"I'm not going to lie, I was nervous about moving to the city. When I talked to Bishop Dolan about it, all he had to say was 'Well, at least you won't get bored'." Father Jon said with a smile, and some of the congregation laughed. One might start to wonder if priests took a class in comedy, considering how often they used jokes to kick off their homily. One might wonder, had they tended to be particularly good jokes.

"When it came to moving in I didn't have much, which I'd like to say is due to my humble, Christ-like lifestyle but is really more indicative of the times we live in. Materialism is worse than ever today- it's just less obvious, hidden away in the confines of our smartphones. Anyways it was still a little too much to handle myself, especially since I don't have a car, so I reached out to our local chapter of the Knights of Columbus and right away several people volunteered to help. They gave up a Saturday morning without a second thought to help a new neighbor they had never met before. I'm quickly realizing that hospitality runs deep in this city, that desire to help people in need."

"We see the heart of a servant in Jesus, too." Father Jon continued. "He spends most of the day healing the sick and they keep coming and coming until after sunset. Mark says the whole town had gathered around his door. Jesus had to be worn out but he kept on serving. When he awoke from sleep the next morning, but before anyone else was up, he needed to get away to pray and he found a deserted place. Simon and the other disciples looked for him and basically asked him to capitalize on this popularity, to use all the goodwill to their advantage. Jesus refused."

"Throughout Mark's Gospel Jesus appears to want no one to know who he is. The demons shout out who he is and he tells them to be quiet. Of course, Jesus doesn't need a recommendation from demons but it appears to be more than that. He heals people and then tells them not to tell anyone about it. Most of them go out and tell everyone they can. In today's story, Jesus can stay and make a name for himself but he says that it is time to move on. Why? Jesus is a servant of God. He does not come to make a splash, to impress people, to become well known. He simply wants to proclaim the good news and heal people."

"We should all endeavour to behave more like Jesus in our daily lives. We should humble ourselves, and perform our charity in private. I know Hell's Kitchen has had some issues with vigilantes ever since Daredevil showed up. And while it's certainly not my place to endorse extralegal activity.. I do think there is virtue to a man who performs his works in a mask."

 **February 4th, 2018**

 **11:56 PM**

"Alright SWAT, I want one squad on each of the doors. Fire exit's on the west side, and there should be a ladder to the roof so we can block off the roof access door." Mahoney ordered the armored cops around under the light of police sirens while Greenstreet followed him around like a nervous puppy. There was shouting at the perimeter as a man in a black suit ducked under the yellow tape holding a Department of State badge above his head.

"Clay Quatermain, Special Envoy for Superhuman Affairs."

"Sir, this is an active crime scene. I'm going to have to ask you to leave, and my officers on the perimeter would've told you the same thing if you hadn't just ignored them. You could've gotten shot." Mahoney crossed his arms.

"Is that a threat, captain? I'm a federal agent." Clay laughed incredulously.

"Lieutenant." Mahoney corrected. He had only recently been promoted, but his uniform did reflect the new rank. Clay just didn't know his ranks very well apparently. "And you can't just walk into my operation. What are you even doing here?"

"Like I said, I represent the Bureau of Superhuman Affairs. Bullseye, the perpetrator of this crime, falls within my jurisdiction and I intend on taking him in."

"Bullseye, huh?"

"Oh, yeah. That's just the name in the news right now." Quatermain shrugged. There was already one news van parked just outside the police tape, with more sure to come.

"Once he's in cuffs, we can talk. Until then, get out of the way." Mahoney said, nearly under his breath. Quatermain relented, and Mahoney turned back to Greenstreet. The poor guy who looked kind of like Wilson Fisk.

 **February 4th, 2018**

 **9:55 AM**

It was generally considered acceptable to start talking as soon as the recessional hymn started, but nonetheless Matt Murdock and his mother sat in silence until the song concluded.

"How's it feel to have a homily written about you?" Maggie asked in a tone that was demeaning but in a playful way. Or, it was probably playful. Even with his senses Matt couldn't always tell with her.

"I thought the homily was about the Gospel." Matt feigned obliviousness. His mother had no patience for bullshit, so playing this type of character was the easiest way to tease her.

"I've heard that Daredevil hasn't been out and about saving people since November. Are you retiring or something?"

"Well enough people told me to stop. I guess I finally listened to reason... You know last year, we were talking about Job."

"Yeah, when you were sulking in your mother's basement." Maggie commented. Matt chuckled.

"After Job had endured his suffering, God blessed him with seven sons and three daughters." Matt said, of course citing the story to a nun he knew was already familiar with it. "Well I'm also doing better than I ever was before. My law practice, my friends.. They are my blessing, and I think Daredevil is in the past." Maggie smiled- it was a sweet sentiment.

 **February 5th, 2018**

 **12:17 AM**

Bullseye sat at the bar looking over his hostages, gun in one hand and detonator in the other. Most of them were crying on the phone, or whispering to each other under hushed breaths. He wondered if any of them would try and play hero again. Maybe all of them would rush him at once. Considering the bleeding, dead bodies of the two guards among them he doubted it. But he was still prepared for the possibility. The phone he had stolen buzzed loudly where he had left it on the bar. The police were calling him back.

"Good morning, officer."

"We've got your man. Open the door."

Bullseye crushed the phone in his hand, just for fun, and tossed it over to its owner. He got up and holstered his gun, careful to pay attention to his hostages. As he walked over to the front door his back was turned and it would be the perfect opportunity to strike. Nobody made a move as he undid the metal knot. He stepped back and pulled the gun back out, pointing it at the door.

The doors opened, and a large white man with a bag over his head was pushed into the building by Lieutenant Mahoney. There was an entire entourage of police forces behind them, observing the interaction with bated breath.

"Take the mask off." Bullseye hissed.

Mahoney complied, pulling away the disguise to reveal officer Greenstreet. Bullseye's finger hovered over the activation button of the detonator, but before he could commit Mahoney lifted a cylindrical object and activated it. There was a flash of blue light. Mahoney and Greenstreet toppled onto the ground, a sickly blue color flooding under their skin as they were paralyzed by the airborne dose of dendrotoxin. Bullseye saw the color course into his veins but was unaffected.

Then the ceiling collapsed above him. He was knocked to the ground by the impact of a metal beam against his head, and the room filled with dust and screams as debris struck some of the hostages. Bullseye looked up at the hole the police had blasted in the roof and identified a couple of silhouettes through the dust. He took them both out with shots to the head, avoiding their dead bodies as they fell into the building, and turned his sights to the front entrance.

Four SWAT team members filtered in, with the officer in front protecting himself with a ballistic shield. Bullseye ran up and grabbed one side of the shield with his free hand, ripping it away from the officer and knocking him to the ground with it. The two officers on Bullseye's right fired at him with handguns, and their shots were blocked by the shield. The officer on Bullseye's left had a clear shot though and got him through the back of the shoulder.

Bullseye threw the ballistic shield at the officer on the left, launching it hard enough to break the man's neck. He then unloaded two quick shots at the officers on his right, aiming for their unprotected faces with flawless accuracy. One of them managed to get a shot off before getting hit, but Bullseye's helmet managed to stop the bullet.

The police outside were well aware that things were going to shit at this point and were preparing to storm the building. Bullseye grabbed a canister of tear gas from one of the SWAT guy's belts and decided to start working on his escape. He ran to the other side of the room and spotted orange sparks coming out from under the fire escape doors- they were sawing through the metal rod he had wrapped around the handles.

He turned his attention to the roof access, kicking the door down as he had tied it closed as well. From here there were stairs leading to the roof, where evidently there was a spotlight, as it was casting two humanoid shadows onto the back wall of the stairwell. Come to think of it, he could hear a helicopter hovering above the building outside.

Bullseye activated the tear gas canister and threw it against the stairwell wall, bouncing it onto the roof. He raced up the stairs after it, ambushing the two officers in the gas and instantly knocking one of them out with a shot just over his shoulder into his brachial plexus. The other SWAT team member approached behind another ballistic shield, so Bullseye holstered his pistol, picked up the downed officer's shotgun, and fired it through the shield's plexiglass window at point blank.

He fired at the police chopper overhead to no avail, before the gas cleared and he saw the passenger point a mounted machine gun at him. Bullseye dropped the shotgun and ran like hell, freeing up both of his hands to navigate the rooftops. He had spent plenty of time on roofs in Iraq, but not exactly on this level. Were it not for his enhanced athleticism and agility, that gunner would have turned him to swiss cheese in seconds. He did not let up on the trigger.

The helicopter was keeping him in its sights with a spotlight, so Bullseye ducked behind a roof access door for a momentary reprieve from the lead onslaught. He pulled a segment of a pipe out of the wall there and chucked it at the chopper, hitting and breaking the spotlight with it from around the corner. Now that he was protected by the cover of the night, Bullseye hopped into an alleyway and the helicopter lost track of him.

 **February 4th, 2018**

 **7:50 PM**

Karen and Matt sat on either side of the coffee table in his apartment, eating curry they picked up from their favorite Indian place. It wasn't even either of their favorite choice of food, but they found themselves going there often. Their first date there hadn't been all that long ago really, but it still reminded them of how long they had been in each other's lives.

"Y'know I heard Coney Island is opening back up next week. They didn't bother rebuilding the Parachute Jump though." Karen said between bites.

"The what now?"

"Yeah it used to be this ride there, where I guess you jumped off and parachuted to the bottom. They actually closed the ride in the 60's but later they decorated it in a bunch of LED lights. I think it was pretty much a historical landmark in Brooklyn, I'm surprised you never heard about it."

"I've never been there, or to any amusement park." Matt explained. "I'm not sure I would like it, I think I might just get sick."

"Only one way to find out." Karen smiled.

"Let's see if we can't sort out our current employment situation before we start planning a day at the park. I'm going to look into-"

"Matt."

"Hm?"

Karen leaned forward, gently caressed Matt's cheek and kissed him. Matt kissed back, softly at first but then with fervor, the almost sloppy kind of kisses you give when there is nobody else around to judge. It was just the two of them tonight.

 **February 5th, 2018**

 **12:29 AM**

Bullseye stopped in an alleyway for a moment, trying to get a sense of where he was without getting out of cover. He had just finished figuring it out from examination of the skyline when two police cruisers pulled up in front of the alley.

He took care of the first car before its two occupants even opened the doors, with a single bullet through the passenger side window. When he looked over to the second car, however, one of the officers shined a flashlight in his eyes. Bullseye faltered for a second before deciding to attempt a blind shot. Knowing him it would've been on target, but he hesitated a second too long. The police officer shot him, his body armor failed, and the bullet pierced his lung.

He fell to his knees, desperately trying to overcome the pain and keep on fighting, but it was no use. He couldn't breathe, one of his lungs was filling up with blood. The two officers approached with their guns drawn, and they were in the middle of reporting their success over the radio when they were gunned down by a hail of submachine gun fire.

Bullseye's vision was going dark as he struggled against the oncoming unconsciousness. The last thing he saw was Clay Quatermain brandishing a submachine gun, climbing over the hood of a police cruiser in his black suit.

"Let's bring you back home, son."


	7. All Quiet in Hell's Kitchen

**Chapter 7: All Quiet in Hell's Kitchen**

 **February 5th, 2018**

 **7:30 AM**

It had been a while since Matt had woken up sore. For once it wasn't because he was out all night beating the shit out of people.

Karen was cradled in his naked arms. She had woken up first but neglected to get up or say anything. She just laid there with a soft smile on her face.

The talking alarm clock went off again, announcing the time over and over in its haphazard-toned robot voice. Karen reached over and turned it off, knocking over an opened box of condoms.

Matt groaned a loud and prolonged groan before getting up and putting some clothes on. Karen turned around to look at him.

"Shouldn't we take a shower first?"

 **7:41 AM**

Matt opened the fridge and began a sensory catalog of what all was in there while simultaneously putting on his tie. One advantage to his powers that people didn't typically think of was that he could always tell where that smell was coming from- he pulled out a partially rotten bunch of bananas and binned them. Karen was already good to go and set about checking her phone while sitting on the couch.

"Oh my god."

"What's up?" Matt asked. He set two little cartons of greek yogurt on the counter and closed the fridge.

"There was an attack at a nightclub last night." Karen said. "According to this story it was a shooting, hostage situation and bomb threat wrapped in one. The shooter wore a mask and a costume and asked for Wilson Fisk."

"What happened?"

"Police prevented the bomb from going off but the shooter escaped on foot." Karen read. "We were busy getting busy while this _shit_ was going on."

"Are you saying we should've been there?" Matt asked. Karen looked at him, her eyebrows arched with concern. Or was that pity?

"No… You get paid to be a lawyer. You don't owe anything else to this city." Karen tried to assure her boyfriend. How she felt about the situation was pretty clear, but the last thing she wanted was for him to regret their first real night together. Especially when it seemed like he was finally at ease.

"When I don't go out, people get hurt." He stirred up the cups of thick yogurt- they were the kind with fruit mixed in because Matt found plain yogurt to be kind of awful tasting. His phone went off, announcing Foggy's name three times before he answered it.

"Matt, have you seen the story about the nightclub attack?"

"Just now. What's up?" Matt passed a cup of yogurt with a plastic spoon stuck in it to Karen.

"Get to the office. Mahoney is here and he wants to talk to us about it."

"On our way." Matt said. He put his phone away and started to leave. He stopped at the door, his own cup of yogurt in hand, and smiled at Karen. "Let's get to work."

 **7:49 AM**

"I can't talk for long. DiMolina wants to give me a personal chewing out for how last night ended up. Chopper crew used automatic weapons without clearance, our vertical entry resulted in minor injuries of five civilians.. That bastard killed seven officers and got away."

"That sucks." Foggy threw up his hands, sympathetically sharing Brett's sense of utter defeat. "I'm not sure what I can do for you though. I don't think the prosecution is going to need any help once this guy is in handcuffs."

"It's not you I want to talk to, Nelson."

"Once again, nothing has changed between us."

"Yeah yeah. There are reports the perp displayed superhuman abilities. Bending metal, breathing tear gas, taking a bullet in stride. I hit him with this tranquilizer grenade, this weapon for dealing with enhanced threats we got from that ATCU joint- it put me out for an hour and this Bullseye guy shrugged it off in a second. Considering your partner's other line of work, I thought you guys might have a lead for me."

"What, Karen? She was a reporter. Did some articles on vigilantes but-"

"Don't bullshit me." Mahoney took a moment to roll his eyes before interrupting. "Murdock. Daredevil."

"I think you're referring to an unsubstantiated claim that a mentally challenged client of mine made after being pressured to the witness stand and cajoled into testimony on an unrelated subject."

"No, I'm referring to video evidence of Daredevil revealing his identity inside of Wilson Fisk's penthouse on the night of his arrest."

"What?"

"Murdock took off his mask to give Fisk an ultimatum. Made him swear not to mess with his loved ones ever again. FBI had that room under constant camera surveillance, and the tapes were still rolling when he took off the mask."

"Don't worry," Mahoney continued, "That video's not getting out of NYPD lockup anytime soon. We may be tired as shit of all these superheroes running around, but those of us on the force know Daredevil's one of the good ones."

"He's also retired." Foggy retorted.

"Yeah well if he ever wants to get back into it, you can let him know the police are hiring."

 **11:10 PM**

"What is this place anyways?" The visitor asked. He was in a secret underground compound on the edge of Hell's Kitchen near Times Square. Wearing a lime green blazer with a burgundy vest underneath, he stood out quite magnificently against the endless gray concrete.

"It's an old SHIELD facility. Turned over to the military after the whole Triskelion thing. It's pretty much candy land down here." His guide, on the other hand, looked right at home. Save for his modest height he was like a modern day interpretation of a mythological dwarf. He was portly, bearded and spent his days forging magical artifacts from technology in the tunnels underneath Manhattan.

He punched a code into a keypad in the wall and a segment of concrete slid out of the way to reveal one of many hidden rooms. Inside, hanging on chains in a less than glamorous mechanical rig, was a metal suit.

It was more of a full body black skinsuit, with a series of dull red metal plates set into vital positions. There was a silver faceplate with a red V set atop it just above the eyes, vaguely resembling the "horns" of an owl. And in the center of the torso there was the real kicker- a glowing circle of light.

"So what's this?" The guest asked.

"That, Mr. Owlsley, is the world's first miniaturized arc reactor built by someone not named Tony Stark." The guide nearly tripped over himself in excitement trying to explain why this was a big deal. "Well, not technically. You see it was built by someone called Ivan Vanko, but then it got destroyed so I-"

"I don't care. To be honest I really don't care." Owlsley cut the backstory short there. "What does it do?"

 **8:05 AM**

The door to Nelson, Murdock and Page eked open as the latter two partners arrived. Even at her own office Karen opened the door with a small degree of caution, and Matt quietly stepped in behind her. He was holding his white cane with him this time but not exactly using it.

"Hello again, Ms. Page, Mr. Murdock." Mahoney's eyes settled on Matt. He looked the blind attorney up and down, cracking a smile as he did.

"Good morning detective Mahoney." Karen smiled diplomatically. "Is there something we can do for you?"

"It's Lieutenant Mahoney."

"Oh, congratulations on your promotion."

"Yeah well it's not exactly hard to climb the ranks when you've got cops dropping like flies." Brett remarked.

"Yeah I heard about the attack last night. That's terrible, I'm so sorry." Matt said with a frown. He never looked people in the eye, but in this sort of situation in particular he tended to hang his head.

"That psycho killed seven of New York's finest. Last couple of times someone went on a spree like that, Daredevil helped take us down." The police Lieutenant kept his gaze fixed on Matt as he spoke. "You remember that, Murdock?"

"He's operating on the assumption that you're the vigilante known as Daredevil." Foggy helpfully pointed out. Matt sighed. On one hand it was always nice to just drop the charade, on the other hand it was becoming harder and harder to maintain plausible deniability and he wasn't exactly looking forward to being imprisoned.

"Any idea who Bullseye is, then?" Mahoney asked. "One of your super friends blow a fuse and start going postal?"

"I don't.." Matt nearly denied having 'super-friends', but then he remembered his last run-in with the Hand, with the likes of Jessica Jones and Luke Cage by his side. "Only one of them is even close to matching the physical description, and he's out of the country. It's not someone I've met."

"Well we know someone is going after people who worked for Fisk, right? We were thinking they were targeting people who turned on him, maybe tying loose ends, but what if we got it wrong?" Karen pointed out. "Bullseye said he wanted to kill Wilson Fisk, what if he's the one trying to kill all of Fisk's old employees too?"

"The murders of Tammy Hatley and Felix Manning were supposed to be quiet, under the radar. That doesn't seem like Bullseye's MO." Foggy countered. It wasn't an argumentative counter but instead a collaborative one.

"He's working for somebody else then." Mahoney declared. "A couple cops working perimeter caught Bullseye fleeing the scene. They got him good, we found arterial blood on the scene. Before they could make their arrest they were killed with what looks like machine gun fire. From the _other_ direction."

"You got his blood? Can't you run a DNA test on that?" Foggy asked.

"We got the results back this morning, and there's no match. The DNA isn't even naturally occurring, it's been altered somehow."

"So our best bet is to find whoever bailed him out. Someone capable of altering DNA." Matt suggested.

"Great. Any idea where to start looking for that?" Brett put his hands on his hips.

"I might have a lead." Karen offered. "When Bill Riggle botched that murder you mentioned, somebody framed him with child pornography and got somebody called Christine Joyce to reveal the affair they had together. Well, Christine was paid to do that from an account under the name Ernest McJavit."

"How do you know that?" Mahoney raised an eyebrow at that.

"...I broke into Christine's house and read her emails." Karen admitted with a little bit of smugness.

"Jesus, do any of you _not_ break the law?" Foggy sort of raised his hand in response to that but Mahoney ignored him.

"Anyways I looked up that name and it's not a real person, it's just a dummy account. But the holder is M&K Financial." Karen continued.

"Hold up, M&K Financial? Owned by Jordan Kline?" Foggy asked, practically doing a double take.

"Yeah, it's a Wall Street bank founded by husband and wife team Jordan Kline and Donna Müller after they moved here from Germany. It's the kind of story I would have been writing a puff piece about at the Bulletin, except Donna was arrested for investment fraud in 2014."

"Marci was in the middle of defending Kline when she got charged with malpractice, and her boss is testifying against her." Foggy said.

"Since when do rich law partner types try to get their own employees disbarred?"

"Right, not great for business." Foggy picked up a baseball he had lying around the office- his thinking ball- and tossed it around a bit. "However I have good reason to believe that Linda Chao is not exactly a difficult person to blackmail."

"And why is that, Nelson?" Mahoney asked.

"What, besides the obvious?" Foggy smirked. "When Jeri Hogarth split with Chao and Benowitz, she took over half the firm's business with her. She couldn't hold on to it, but still. You don't arbitrate that kind of deal without some dirt. There's probably somebody very interested in taking Kline down that's twisting Chao's arm to lose the case by any means necessary."

"Well, let me know when you have a lead. I've got to get back to the precinct." Brett dipped his head in a curt gesture of respect to his childhood 'friend' and his two partners as he left.

Mahoney was a well established ally of Nelson, Murdock and Page, and they had just been very transparent with him, but there was still a slight sense of relief when the door shut behind him. Karen went to the other room to start some coffee, and Foggy replaced his thinking ball with a banana before taking a seat.

"This is just like old times, huh? Together in the office, investigating some shadowy corporate puppetmaster." Matt mused.

"Gotta be honest Matt, I am about sick to death of shadowy corporate puppetmasters." Foggy said bluntly between bites of banana.

"Yeah well we could try and stick to being normal lawyers, but I'm getting the feeling that you're the only person in this city that would be happy if Daredevil never came back." Matt sat down next to Foggy. Besides the interim between Wilson Fisk's first imprisonment and the Punisher's arrival, the last couple of months were the first time they had worked together as normal lawyers since Landman and Zack. Now with Bullseye and his supposed benefactor, things were quickly getting pulled back into Daredevil's world.

"It wasn't fair of Brett to try and pin Bullseye on you like that. The cops go back and forth on trying to arrest you for years and now that you're done with it they're gonna try and say you have a responsibility to help?"

"To be fair, the people trying to arrest me were usually working for Fisk." Foggy paused for a moment, playing thoughtful before a smile slipped out and they both chuckled together.

"I'm not versed in superhuman law." Karen started as she walked back into the main room, "But I don't think a couple of lawyers helping the police look into a homicide constitutes vigilantism."

Foggy looked to Matt, interested in what he had to say to that. They had temporarily closed their firm to clients because the slip of Matt's (alleged) identity as Daredevil had turned their previous case into an untenable mess, so it wasn't like they had anything else to do.

"So we know someone is using dummy accounts from M&K to finance these hits on associates of Wilson Fisk. It could be the same person trying to get Kline arrested, maybe trying to hide their tracks." Matt made this gesture with his hands as he talked, a circular motion like some kind of analog machine working through the facts. "Kline's probably not too happy about it. We speak to him, maybe he'll rat out the man behind the curtain."

"Kline is a Chao and Benowitz client, Marci's working his case so I could probably get to him easily enough." Foggy had quickly chewed up the rest of his banana so he could speak, and he rolled his chair over to the trash can and made a shot on goal with the peel.

"I'll visit Müller, see if she can corroborate anything Kline says."

 **11:32 PM**

"The arming jacket is made from an adaptive nanotube yarn, so it can vent excess heat and insulate you against colder environments."

The techno-dwarf explained as he finally finished rigging the suit onto Owlsley. The process had taken 20 minutes, 'first time diagnostics' or whatever, and the guy hadn't shut up the entire time. A lot of it had gone in one of Owlsley's ears and out the other, mostly technobabble, but he had retained some of it. The man's name was Phineas, and he had been engineering 'super-criminals' for six years.

"The armor plating is magnetically attached to the arming jacket to give you a near-unobstructed range of motion. They'll automatically disengage if the arc reactor fails so you don't get trapped inside the armor."

Phineas manually twisted a crank on the back of the metal rig and, with a terrible, prolonged squeal, the supports lowered until Owlsley was standing on solid floor. Phineas removed the chains and took several steps back.

"Okay, try walking to me."

Owlsley took a single footstep before stopping. He groaned and bent over to rest his hands on his knees before stopping himself- the controls were built into the gauntlets and he didn't want to be setting anything off on accident.

"Damn this thing is heavy."

"It's actually really light." Phineas insisted. "Under 200 pounds. But you don't have neuroprosthesis or servos like Iron Man, you'll have to move around with your own strength until you get off the ground."

As Owsley slowly clonked his way over, Phineas got his phone out to look at a text.

"Speaking of that, the helmet OS is for enhanced visibility and diagnostics only, all the controls are built into the gauntlets so you'll want to learn how it works in a controlled environment."

As Phineas continued to give his lecture, one of the henchmen watching over the proceedings stepped over to him.

"Fisk says it's all hands on deck. Can we come back to this later?"

"Nah, he's already in the suit. You can leave, we'll be fine here." Phineas said, and the henchmen scurried off to wherever it was they had been called.

Owlsley cocked his head sideways as he watched the interaction, not unlike an owl. There wasn't much else he could do to display curiosity, it's not like raising an eyebrow would come across through the glowing eye holes.

"Something I should know about?" He asked.

"Nothing important. Come on, I've modified this room over here to be a flight pack test chamber."

 **11:13 AM**

Karen reversed her car into one of the several back-in angle only parking spots lining the sidewalk in front of MDC Brooklyn. They were half an hour away from Hell's Kitchen, just inland from the waterfront on the west side of Brooklyn. The MDC was a stone monolith of a building, with panels of red brick interrupting the gray stone in place of windows. Karen and Matt walked up the front stairs to a glass set of double doors and they entered together.

"Hello I'm Matthew Murdock, I'm here to meet a client, I made an appointment earlier today." He wasn't impersonating anyone this time, though there were still shenanigans involved.

"Murdock, huh. You're Daredevil right?"

"What?" Matt laughed incredulously. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Whatever you say, hornhead. Just don't try doing any superheroics in here."

A door leading deeper into the prison opened with a loud buzz, and a prison guard led them into a locker room of sorts.

"No personal property is allowed in the visiting room. Bags, coats, money, keys, personal identification, electronics and anything else you have on you must be stored in a locker before I can let you proceed." The guard informed them as Matt was already getting his wallet out to search for some change to operate the locker. This was pretty standard prison visit procedure.

Everything in Matt's wallet had a particular place, so that he could find the type of bill he needed without being able to look at it. He could tell change apart from its size, even its taste in the air, but his senses couldn't read a number off a flat dollar bill.

With their personal possessions safe from the reach of any inmates, Matt and Karen entered the visiting room. At this point they had started to enter the 'bowels' of the MDC, a couple rooms in from the glass entrance there was nothing to light the claustrophobic room other than fluorescent bulbs loud enough for any human to hear. Bathed in artificial light and kind of musky air, the most fitting way to describe the environment here would be 'sickly'.

"Who are you? You're not on my visitor list." They sat down with Donna Müller, a little German woman with her brunette hair cut short. She had pale, almost yellowing skin and dark bags under her eyes.

"I'm Matt Murdock, this is my partner Karen Page."

"We would like to reopen your case. Some evidence has turned up that, if we bring it to trial, could get you out of jail." Karen explained.

"What evidence is that then?" Donna asked. Karen looked to Matt.

"Jordan Kline is facing charges of securities fraud, very similar to the ones brought against you. We believe you took a fall for him and if you could shed some light on your husband's actions, possibly a benefactor he's been working for, we could get you acquitted."

"You want to know about this benefactor for my sake, huh?" Donna's heartbeat was steady, firm. She had the composure of someone who was seeing right through some bullshit.

"Yes. Mrs. Müller, any information you can give us could be the difference between serving the rest of your sentence behind bars or getting out of this hellhole a little early." Karen insisted, picking up Matt's hesitant silence.

"I've got nothing to say to you." Donna stood up and walked over to the guard to be escorted back into prison. "Good luck with whoever it is you're chasing this time."

Matt folded his hands together with a frown. Karen sighed and gave Matt a pat on the back, and when she looked up from her boyfriend there was a different woman, another prisoner, sitting down in front of them.

"Oh, hello?" Karen greeted the woman. The middle-aged man that had been visiting this woman looked back from his table but didn't do anything. The guards didn't seem to care.

"I'm Meghan Caldwell, I used to work at the Bulletin."

"I'm sorry, I don't think I remember you."

"You wouldn't." Matt interjected. "Caldwell was arrested before you started there. She worked for Fisk, helping him control the local media."

"Oh." In just a few short sentences Karen's entire perception of this woman had changed.

"Fisk paid a lot of people to control the narrative, and not all of them went down with him like I did, not even the second time." Caldwell said. "Müller might have what you need, but she'd never tell you and risk the consequences."

Karen and Matt both paused to think that over. Karen had experienced firsthand how easy it was for people like Wilson Fisk to make people disappear- particularly when they were in prison. And of course Matt knew that Kingpin had not too long ago engineered his control over the FBI, so even federal operations like the MDC were within his potential sphere of influence.

"Why risk talking to us then?"

"I… Helping Wilson Fisk is the worst thing I've done in my entire life. I just want to do what I can to make up for it." Meghan frowned. She was definitely sincere, Karen could tell that much without hearing her heartbeat. "And Daredevil, if Fisk really is back.. You've got to take care of him for good."

 **12:02 PM**

"He's really not going to meet with me?" Foggy cried out at his fiancee. They were at the offices of Chao and Benowitz, previously Hogarth, Chao and Benowitz, and this was not the first time Foggy had been incredibly frustrated in this building.

"I can't make him. He's scared, and to be honest I am too." Marci pouted, and then brought Foggy in close for a hug.

"Don't worry, we've got this." Foggy gave her a reassuring sort of back rub during their hug. Really he was worried, and not at all sure they had this.

"Oh, I did at least get you this." Marci broke apart from Foggy to hand him a few sheets of stapled papers. "It's a list of every one of Kline's associates."

"This is great Marci, thank you."

"I do what I can. See you tonight?"

"Yeah, see you." Foggy smiled to his fiancee before she turned and got back to work. He got his phone out and made a call.

"Hey Brett, how did your date with the Commissioner go?"

"Pretty bad. They put me on paid leave."

"Oh, damn. Sorry to hear that."

"Have you got me something or are you just bothering me for the sake of it?"

"I've got a list of potential leads for your second shooter, or whoever's paying your second shooter more likely. You can't exactly launch an investigation when you're off the clock, though."

"Tell you what, send me the list now and I'll scope them out on my free time, take whatever I learn back with me to the precinct when they reinstate me."

"Alright, thanks a bunch. Give me a call if you see anything interesting."

 **11:29 AM**

"I'm tired of lying to people." Matt said.

"You mean what we said to Donna?" Karen asked as they made their way back to their possessions in the locker room. "We could have reopened her case for real depending on what she told us."

"That's not why we were here though. Donna Müller was just a stepping stone in our pursuit of justice. I did pretty much the exact same thing to a guy called Michael Kemp not long ago. He's a great guy, but I didn't care about him at the time because I was so eager to get at Fisk."

"That's the reason Melvin was in that mess too." Matt continued. "I got what I needed out of him and left him to fend for himself, and look how that's gone for him."

"Matt, don't blame yourself. You were just preventing even worse stuff from happening." Karen said as she helped him put his coat back on. "If it wasn't for you, I wouldn't be _alive_ right now."

"I know. And I know how to stop Kingpin for good. I can't let anyone else get caught in the crossfire."

"Don't kill him. You know you can't."

"No, not that. I made him a promise, and I think it's about time I honored it."


End file.
